From the Archive: 16 reciprocity

on Tevin Campbell and modal interchange

I’ve been listening to a lot of Janet Jackson, which you’ll know if you read Currently. Her work is so wildly overlooked in the public conception of R&B and pop that it would seem she was purposefully erased from it by forces outside of her control (but that’s another issue entirely). Janet’s legacy and influence run so deep that not even conscious expunction could diminish her impact on the genre, which lies in her insistence on trailblazing.

I’ve been thinking about Janet because I rediscovered my favorite song of hers, a deep cut off of The Velvet Rope (1997) called “Special.” It contains a secret track (bring these back, please) and a sultry Janet whispering, “You must learn to water your spiritual garden.” It also contains a significant amount of modal interchange, which is what got me thinking about the topic for this issue in the first place.

Modal interchange is the practice of “borrowing” chords from adjacent keys to imply brief shifts away from the tonic that still sound consonant in relation to the home key. Most modal interchange occurs between the parallel minor or major, but you can borrow chords from any related key, including related modes. Importantly, modal interchange is not modulation, as the home key is never abandoned; this distinction occurs because the ear recognizes the shared tonic.

Newer readers of this newsletter might not know that I went to jazz nerd camp and actually have quite a bit of mismatched and half-forgotten music theory knowledge. Modal interchange is one of the topics that stuck slightly better, and I find it to be fascinating—it’s like one of those secret picture games in that just the right perspective is required to see the shift.

While “Special” is my favorite example of modal interchange, it’s not the most accessible. I chose “Can We Talk,” and iconic R&B hit by Tevin Campbell for my analysis. It was written by Daryl Simmons and Babyface and released in 2001. It went gold in the U.S. and is by far Tevin Campbell’s most popular song.

Let’s just look at the intro:

I’ve noted the chord qualities as roman numerals, as is typical in chord analysis. The blue chords are diatonic to the D minor scale and the red chords are borrowed, in this case from the parallel D major scale. Ignoring, for the sake of this exercise, all the sevenths, the intro to this song follows a pretty traditional chord progression of v-i-iv, which are the dominant-tonic-subdominant tones in the scale and are commonly used in pop music.

The E minor plays a crucial role in the transition between the minor and major scales, because the II chord is minor in both, meaning that the subsequent A major is both unexpected, from the perspective of D minor, and completely acceptable, from the perspective of D major. I’m sure this tone has a real name, but I think of it as the pivot point. Then the D major chord actually gets played, momentarily bringing the song to a major space, before it returns to the consonant dominant minor V, A minor.

If all that was confusing, stop reading and listen to the intro of “Can We Talk.” The modal interchange is something you can feel, even if my explanation has failed you. It might just come off as “soul” or “jazzy,” because so many artists of these genres use modal interchange with great frequency. Every song on Hotter Than July (1980), the Stevie Wonder album, features modal interchange.

Chord analysis is interesting because it’s subjective—you could argue that the major V and I are just that, major interpolations in the minor key with no purpose at all. You could also argue that the major chords denote a key change, and the minor ones another change back to the original key. Modal interchange is just a shortcut way to intellectualize the use of chords that are technically wrong, but feel right. I’m fascinated by the analysis of tones and modes and chords, but these days I’m mostly seeking out music that sounds and feels good. Ultimately, that’s what matters—the roman numerals are just some extra fun.

Let me know if this kind of content was interesting to read! Also let me know if my chord analysis is completely wrong, please and thank you.